Going green, Lego looks to ditch plastic

The iconic Lego building block may soon break its plastic habit.

The Danish toymaker said it's looking to find an alternative material that will be sustainable and reduce the company's carbon footprint. The effort will involve a $150 million investment, with Lego Group planning to hire more than 100 employees in the new Lego Sustainable Materials Centre.

Lego said whatever material is developed won't change its quality or safety standards. The plan is part of the company's goal to reduce its environmental footprint and "leave a positive impact on the planet our children will inherit," it said in a statement. More than 60 billion Lego pieces were manufactured in 2014.

"This is a major step for the LEGO Group on our way towards achieving our 2030 ambition on sustainable materials," said Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO and president of the Lego Group, in a statement. "We have already taken important steps to reduce our carbon footprint and leave a positive impact on the planet by reducing the packaging size, by introducing FSC certified packaging and through our investment in an offshore wind farm. Now we are accelerating our focus on materials."

Lego has been using a type of plastic called Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (or ABS) since the 1960s, according to the trade publication Plastics News. The company's plastic manufacturing system is massive, with more than 5,000 molds operating on more than 1,000 injection molding machines in factories in Denmark, Mexico and Hungary. Lego is currently building a factory in China to meet demand from Asian children and their families.

The effort to create a sustainable material to replace its long-time plastic bricks actually began a few years ago, with Lego announcing in 2012 that it wanted to find an alternative. Testing and research has "given us greater visibility of the challenges we face" in finding a new material, Knudstorp said in the statement.

One test of a polylactic acid didn't pan out when the bricks failed to stick together, according to design site Designorate. Lego's ABS usage represents about 70 percent of its plastics consumption, with the raw materials representing about 30 percent of its gas emissions, the site noted.

The new employees will be recruited to work at Lego Group headquarters in Billund, Denmark, the company said.